Sandra Day O'Connor

Sandra Day O'Connor (26 March 1930-) was an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court from 25 September 1981 to 31 January 2006, succeeding Potter Stewart and preceding Samuel Alito. She was the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court.

Biography
Sandra Day O'Connor was born in El Paso, Texas in 1930, and she faced a great deal of sexual prejudice after graduating from Stanford Law School - at one point she was offered a job as a secretary at a law firm. Despite this, she rose through the Arizona legal system and Republican establishment in a remarkable career. A member of the Arizona Senate from 1969 to 1975, she became its first female majority leader from 1973 to 1974. In 1975, she returned to the law, and was appointed to the Arizona Court of Appeals in 1979. In 1981, she became the first female US Supreme Court justice, appointed by Ronald Reagan. On the court, she aligned herself initially with the conservative William Rehnquist, but began to move towards the middle ground, so that by the 1990s she occupied the center vote in a court also composed of four liberal and four conservative justices. She retired in 2006 and served as Chancellor of the College of William and Mary from 2005 to 2012.